


The Nature of the Truth

by Naphorism



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Allison Hargreeves-centric, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Experimental Style, Gen, Good Intentions, Good Sibling Allison Hargreeves, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Lies, Pre-Canon, Self-Hatred, Truth, there's the one tag Klaus always contributes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23516917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naphorism/pseuds/Naphorism
Summary: 00.03 watches.00.03 sees the lies, and tells more.00.03 sees the truths, and she changes them.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Ben Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves & Diego Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves & Everyone, Allison Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves & The Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves
Comments: 15
Kudos: 50





	The Nature of the Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Well this is more... experimental than I intended  
> Enjoy?

00.03 knows that all the best lies are grounded in the truth. The only way to tell a lie is to first know the truth. To change the truth, she must understand what the truth is. She has been trained accordingly. Watching carefully is the only way to learn the truth.

00.03 watches. She sees the truths and lies of her teammates, her siblings, and she does her best to understand.

00.01 is scared. Of disappointing their father, of letting down his teammates. He is scared that 00.02 really is the better leader. He is scared that someday he will be forced to make a decision that hurts someone. He is proud of being the leader: this is his lie. He wishes he could spend one day without worrying about what being the leader actually _means_. He is scared that he will never know.

00.02 is sad. He is certain his subordinate status is his own fault; that somewhere he has a shortcoming visible to everyone but himself. Anger is his lie. He does not yet resent 00.01, though he will come to someday. He pretends to blame his leader, when in reality he continues to blame _himself_. He pushes, and punches, and throws, and does his very best to beat his sadness out of the world around him. The world sees anger.

00.03 does not know her own truth. She thinks she must be made entirely of lies. After all, is that not her purpose? Her truth must be lies. They are all she tells, and as she does, the truth they become.

00.04 hates. He hates their father, his powers, the spirits that haunt him. He hates his teammates for having powers they can forget, if only for a moment. He hates himself for the powers he knows will lie dormant beneath his hatred for as long as he fails to overcome it. He laughs, and that is his lie. Laughs through pain, fear. Laughter may be the best medicine, but it will _never_ heal 00.04.

00.05 yearns for what he is not permitted. He knows his powers go beyond what he is allowed to do, and wishes to live up to his full potential. His arrogance is his lie. He has no confidence that nothing would go wrong were he to try the impossible. But he knows that _no one_ will ever believe him capable of the great things he has been fated to accomplish unless he wears a facade of confidence to inspire the same confidence in others.

00.06 is tired. Constantly, all-consumingly _exhausted_. He wants sleep without the crawling of his skin waking him. He wants to train with his teammates instead of practicing alone late at night so that he cannot hurt anyone. Disdain for Them is his lie. In his darkest moments, 00.06 would happily allow the beast to consume innocents if it would appease Them enough to give him a moment's rest. He will learn to be better, someday.

00.07 just wants to be like her siblings. Be a _real_ part of the team. Her lie is her carefully built nonchalance and naïveté. She has not outgrown her envy of their powers. She knows she is treated unfairly. She does not care that with powers comes suffering, though she may put on a sympathetic face when it is asked of her.

00.03 knows she is the only one who can make a difference. She can change her siblings' truths.

00.03 says she heard that 00.01 was the best leader who ever lived.

00.03 says she heard that 00.02 was confident in his own abilities.

00.03 says she heard that 00.04 would find a way to keep the spirits at bay.

00.03 says she heard that 00.05 would time travel, and that it would work.

00.03 says she heard that 00.06 was glad he did not get much sleep, since it gave him time to read.

00.03 says she heard that 00.07 had a power stronger and more deadly than any of her siblings.

00.01 is never scared again, until almost a decade later as he watches blood seep out of a crater in his teammate's chest. 00.01's fearlessness kills 00.06, and 00.01 will never know respite from fear again.

00.02's truth becomes hatred. Hatred of 00.01 for holding a role he is confident he could do better. Hatred of their father for putting him in second place. Hatred that his siblings do not see that he is the better leader. 00.02 will never smile at 00.01 again.

00.04 finds a new kind of spirits. He finds it easy to steal from their father's bar, and even easier to move on to bigger things. He finds things that turn his eyes red, make his pupils expand, leave bruises up his arms, make blood trickle from his nose. 00.04 rarely sees ghosts again.

00.05 becomes cocky, and then he disappears. He travels, and he is gone forever. It certainly seems that his time travel has worked. Until the very end of the world, 00.05 will never be seen again.

00.06 retreats into his books. He reads thousands of stories, learns millions of things, and yet it never slakes his urge to escape into other worlds. He looks at books far more often than he ever looks people in the eye. 00.06 is far too busy reading to sleep the way regular people do ever again.

00.07 never changes. Her envy lives on in her heart, festering, until eventually it rots her from the inside out. She writes her book. 00.07's siblings will never be able to look at her the same way again.

00.03 lives with the guilt. She lives with the catastrophic results of her lies, as she always has. As she will always have to. It is the price of being a liar. But most of all, she lives with the guilt of the lies that never took hold.

00.03 _knows_ lies have to be grounded in the truth. She has always understood this. But she can't help but feel a failure. All she is good at is lying; making up the truth. In the one instance where her lies would have made a more favourable truth for everyone, they fell short. Nights of her childhood spent lying awake, murmuring, "I heard a rumour 00.07 had a stronger power than any of us," in every combination of words she could think of, over and over again, until her throat was hoarse. She thinks there must never have been enough truth to it.

00.03 will understand, one day. As she holds her hands to her bleeding throat, as powerless as 00.07 once was, she realises why her lies failed her all those years ago.

00.03 realises that, like always, her lies took hold and made the truth even uglier than it was when she opened her mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had the idea that as a kid Allison tried to give Vanya the most powerful powers on the team in my head since I read tua for the first time back in 2014/15. Some of the things that the show made canon about Allison's powers and how she used them on Vanya actually solidified this headcanon for me, so I thought I'd try to write something. It sort of expanded into the ways she's tried and failed to improve all of her siblings' lives  
> Thank you for reading. Kudos and comments are the highlight of my year, with the way this one's going


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